Families looking for an enriching, fun, and affordable(!) way to spend time together this spring can look no further than the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
The century-plus-old, Venetianinspired fine arts museum is serving up FREE museum admission, along with live music, storytelling performances, art-making activities for kids of all ages, and gallery explorations throughout the museum as part of a series of festive Fun for Families! celebrations – on the Wednesday during April public school vacation weeks – designed to engage families and kids of all ages in art and beauty. Fun for Families! invites visitors of all ages to enjoy one of the city’s most inspiring destinations together and alongside other families and to exercise their own creativity with a range of activities, gallery guides, and live performances. Activities range from Wacky Hats and Fantastic Creatures art-making to Puzzling Portraits to a Search and Match game that asks kids to search the collection to solve puzzles or questions. Looking guides designed especially for kids and families provide a glimpse into animals hiding throughout the collection and more.
Live performances, including “A Woodland Cinderella” storytelling and puppet show by Deborah Costine and musical performances by New England Conservatory students add a celebratory air to the events.
Fun for Families! events are FREE for ALL for the first time this year, thanks to the support of Bank of America, the Gardner Museum’s Official Sponsor of School and Community Partnerships Programs.
The events punctuate a week-long public school vacation week celebration offering enriched activities, drawing around the court, and free gallery guides for kids and families. Public school vacation week activities are FREE for all kids under 18 and free with museum admission for all adult visitors, and are offered during the vacation week: April 21st–24th, 2009.
One of the finest art collections in the world, housed in a Venetian-inspired museum palace surrounding an interior courtyard garden, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is personally installed by Isabella Stewart Gardner to fire the imagination of all who visit. The museum’s School and Community Partnership Programs bring diverse groups of young people, families, and individuals to the museum to experience and engage in art through a series of free days, family evening events, a nationally recognized arts education program with proven success in improving critical thinking skills in young children, and more. These initiatives provide important access and education to many in the community who might otherwise have limited opportunity to experience and engage with art. School and Community Partnership Programs specifically serve families and young people nearby Boston neighborhoods including: the Fenway; Hyde Park; Mission Hill; Jamaica Plain; Dorchester; Roxbury; and West Roxbury.
Despite the current economic climate, the Gardner remains committed to ensuring continued, ongoing access to these and other initiatives important to the community. “Cultural institutions have a responsibility to the public to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to engage in and experience art,” says Anne Hawley, the Norma Jean Calderwood Director of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. “Art and beauty provide solace, respite, and inspiration. It is precisely in times of economic uncertainty and challenge that art matters more than ever.” -- www.gardnermuseum.org
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